s
previous ministrations. One evening on his return he found a small
bouquet of inexpensive flowers in a glass on his writing-table. He loved
flowers too well not to detect that they were quite fresh, and could
have been put there only an hour or two before he arrived.

The next evening was Saturday, and, as he usually left the office
earlier on that day, it occurred to him, as he walked home, that it was
about the time his fair neighbor would be leaving the theatre, and that
it was possible he might meet her.

At the front door, however, he found Roberts, who returned his greeting
with a certain awkwardness which struck him as singular. When he reached
the niche on the landing he found his candle was gone, but he proceeded
on, groping his way up the stairs, with an odd conviction that both
these incidents pointed to the fact that the woman had just returned or
was expected.

He had also a strange feeling--which may have been owing to the
darkness--that some one was hidden on the landing or on the stairs where
he would pass. This was further accented by a faint odor of patchouli,
as, with his hand on the rail, he turned the corner of the third
landing, and he was convinced that if he had put out his other hand it
would have come in contact with his mysterious neighbor. But a certain
instinct of respect for her secret, which she was even now guarding in
the darkness, withheld him, and he passed on quickly to his own floor.

Here it was lighter; the moon shot a beam of silver across the passage
from an unshuttered window as he passed. He reached his room door,
entered, but instead of lighting the gas and shutting the door, stood
with it half open, listening in the darkness.

His suspicions were verified; there was a slight rustling noise, and
a figure which had evidently followed him appeared at the end of the
passage. It was that of a woman habited in a grayish dress and cloak of
the same color; but as she passed across the band of moonlight he had
a distinct view of her anxious, worried face. It was a face no longer
young; it was worn with illness, but still replete with a delicacy and
faded beauty so inconsistent with her avowed profession that he felt a
sudden pang of pain and doubt. The next moment she had vanished in her
room, leaving the same faint perfume behind her. He closed his door
softly, lit the gas, and sat down in a state of perplexity. That swift
glimpse of her face and figure had made her story impr